Paul O'Callaghan

Comments

Sunset Boulevard and Mulholland Drive because they're the two greatest films about Hollywood, both delightfully caustic and endlessly rewatchable.

Fear Eats the Soul because Fassbinder filters everything I love about Hollywood melodrama through a caustic queer lens.

Do the Right Thing because just firing up the opening credits is enough to give me physical chills. It's also my favourite summer movie.

Pulp Fiction because I've romanticised my memory of watching it on VHS aged 13 as a thrilling death of innocence/initiation into adulthood.

The White Ribbon just edges out Hidden as my favourite Haneke. My own experiences of living in Germany for the past seven years definitely factor into this.

Viridiana because it's such a sly, swaggering fuck-you to the Catholic church.

Cléo because it speaks so directly to my own hypochondriac/self-absorbed tendencies. It's also one of the most seductive and immersive on-screen depictions of Paris, with one of my all-time favourite musical sequences.

Harold and Maude because Ruth Gordon and Bud Court's discordant, awkward rendition of "If you want to sing out, sing out" is one of the most life-affirming things I've ever seen.

Dead Ringers because I had to include Cronenberg somewhere, and this is the film of his that haunts me the most. But it was an extremely close call between this, Crash and A History of Violence.

I wish I could have found space for Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, Joseph L Mankiewicz, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Bresson, PT Anderson, Claire Denis, Chantal Akerman, Nicolas Roeg, Lars von Trier, Pedro Almodóvar, Barry Jenkins, Mike Leigh, John Waters, Jane Campion, Wong Kar-wai, Todd Haynes, Gregg Araki...